Can a brain be intelligent without a body?
Can a brain be intelligent without a body?


No. Don't forget that the main function of the brain is to provide homeostasis between the body and the environment. Without the body, the utility of the brain is no longer relevant.

Alternatively, why consider intelligence only in the brain? How far does our body extend? Embodied cognitive science asks us to consider our entire body and its 
 surrounding extensions utility on the intelligent faculty; The fact that our thumbs stick out in a direction different to our other four fingers allows us to grab things in a effortless way is itself, intelligent.

From this understanding then, the segregation between the intelligent faculty and the "non-intelligent" seems to be murky at best. We'd might as well not consider it unless there is better motivation.


  Does intelligence require a context?


Pragmatically speaking, yes. Intelligent behaviour is typically understood as being goal-directed and intentional. Intentionality implies some sort of agency. It being an agent, implies some sort of agent/environment relationship, which implies an environment to act as context. 

On the other hand, Karl Friston notes in his review that a general principle that the brain (and thus one would imagine, intelligent behaviour) entails is reduction of thermodynamic free energy while maintaining homeostasis with its environment.

This hints at a promise to describe intelligent behaviour purely in terms of thermodynamic processes, but interpretively what this means in a general language is still unclear.

Also, keep in mind that there is no guarantee that we'd recognize a agent as intelligent if its construction is radically different from ours.